Doc Soup Man Tom Roston thinks that The Act of Killing will make it into the top five nominations for Best Documentary at the 2014 Academy Awards.

Last week, the shortlist of 15 films eligible for the best documentary Academy Award was announced, and, perhaps for the first time in the history of the Oscars, there wasn’t a chorus of hem’s and ha’s and WTF’s!

“For the second straight year we have an incredibly strong short list of 15 compelling, well-received documentaries,” Michael Moore told me, clearly in a triumphant mood, having spearheaded the revamping of the selection rules two years ago.

“It’s clear to me, and lot of people in the Academy, that going to a full-democracy system where everyone votes has been the key to the vast improvements we’ve seen,” he said.

I agree. The shortlist used to be selected by committees of members of the documentary branch, and now the selection is made by the entire documentary branch. The emphasis used to be on greater curation and secretive selection that had allowed a few voters to tip the scales in favor of particular pet films and filmmakers. Now, there is both greater fairness and transparency.

Here’s the list:

The Act of KillingThe Armstrong LieBlackfishThe Crash ReelCutie and the BoxerDirty WarsFirst Cousin Once RemovedGod Loves UgandaLife According to SamPussy Riot: A Punk PrayerThe SquareStories We TellTim’s Vermeer20 Feet From Stardom?Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington

What a stellar list! There only a few other films that could have been considered among the best fifteen of the year, and they include The Unknown Known, At Berkeley, Leviathan, Let the Fire Burn, After Tiller, American Promise and Valentine Road.

But I don’t think the exclusion of any of those films counts as an absolute travesty. (The only film I truly wish were on the shortlist, and that isn’t, is Is the Man who Is Tall Happy? but I recognize I am in the minority on this one.) And, in fact, some of the “snubbed” films provide strong arguments against the biggest worry about the new system: that the democratization would lead to just the most popular and powerfully-backed films making the list.

It’s not a perfect system. There were a record 151 qualifying films, and there’s a real question of whether all of the voters can really watch all of those documentaries. Moore is aware of the problem. “There’s one thing still left to fix,” he said. “The Academy is supposed to consider only films that had a theatrical release. We have to bring the number of films we’re expected to watch down to just those that had a true theatrical run. What defines “true” is what we are discussing now.”

That’s good that they are working out the kinks, and at least the problem is a transparent one. One of the related problems is that the shortlisted films are weighted toward releases in the first half of the year, ostensibly because voters are getting more of an opportunity to see them. But that’s an issue that everyone can at least see clearly, and distributors can potentially cope with (release your film earlier in the year or wait until next year) rather than being the result of some back room shenanigans.

As for which of the shortlisted films are going to make it to the top five, I think it’s clear that The Act of Killing, Stories We Tell, and 20 Feet From Stardom ?are locks. For the other two slots, I see The Square, Dirty Wars, Blackfish, and, possibly, First Cousin Once Removed and Cutie and the Boxer, battling it out.

I’ll break it all down, closer to the release of the nominees on January 16th. But, for now, I’ll say a “hurrah,” for a strong fifteen, and hope that these films benefit from the added publicity.

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Tom Roston is a guest columnist for POV's documentary blog. He is a former Premiere magazine senior editor, who graduated from Brown University and started his career in journalism at The Nation and then Vanity Fair. Tom's freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and other publications. He has written several Kindle Singles, including the bestselling Kindle Singles Interview: Ken Burns. Tom's current list of favorite documentaries are: 1. Koyanisqaatsi by Godfrey Reggio; 2. Hoop Dreams by Steve James; 3.Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley; 4.Crumb by Terry Zwigoff; 5. Montage of Heck by Brett Morgen